Stop treating cops like perps
ON THE FIFTH floor of Parker Center, wedged in among the cubicles in the personnel records section, sit two laundry carts like those you might find in the basement of a large hotel.
These carts can be viewed as a barometer of the Los Angeles Police Department's current health because they contain the city-issued equipment turned in by officers who retire or resign from the department. On the day I was there not long ago, the carts were filled to overflowing with leather gun belts, ballistic vests, Kevlar helmets and all the other gear and tackle an officer wears or carries throughout his career.
A police officer attends to this equipment, cataloging each item as it's handed in, and I asked him how long it takes to fill up the carts. "That's just from this week," he said. "We get one or two a day coming in here to quit."
Even as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton trumpet their plan to add 1,000 officers to the LAPD in the coming years, they neglect their obligation to retain the ones they already have. As of April 30, 136 officers had retired from the department this year, according to the Police Protective League. Even more troubling, another 136 have resigned, simply walking away from the job before they were eligible for a pension. Not only does this substantially exceed the expected attrition rate, but many of these officers have left for jobs in other police departments. Why?
In most cases, it isn't the money. Though some suburban agencies are more generous than the LAPD, few of these officers would tell you that they were lured away by the promise of a bigger paycheck. For most, it's simply a desire to be treated fairly while doing a thankless, dirty and dangerous job. In this regard, Bratton has failed to live up to the promise of his first year in L.A.
When Bratton was sworn in as chief in 2002, he inherited a department that had been thoroughly demoralized under his predecessor, Bernard C. Parks. Parks had imposed an absurd disciplinary system that required a full-scale investigation of every personnel complaint, no matter how petty or transparently false.
Officer morale plummeted, and cops began fleeing the department far more quickly than replacements could be hired and trained. Untold thousands of hours were wasted on these complaints even as hundreds of murders went unsolved. Cops were discouraged from doing their jobs, and the city's crime victims paid the price.
